Pearl sent back a thumbs-up, which she had only recently learned to do and now did constantly, sometimes in response to things that did not call for a thumbs-up, like Mr. Feeney's goose died.
"Juniper."
Dana did not knock. Dana had never knocked. She stood in the doorway in her yoga pants and her expensive gray hoodie with her reading glasses pushed up into her hair, which was the color of honey and had been, until this afternoon, a slightly different color of honey. She had been to the salon too. She looked at the bed, at the backpack, at the dress, in that order.
"You were supposed to be back at seven."
"I texted. I was at Grandma Pearl's."
"I saw. I'm not asking where you were, I'm saying when. The kitchen's a disaster. Kenzie had her friends over and somebody has to deal with it, and it's not going to be me, because I've been on my feet since six this morning, and it's not going to be Kenzie, because she's got a big day tomorrow and she needs her sleep."
"Okay," Junie said.
"Okay what?"
"Okay, I'll do the kitchen."
"Thank you." Dana smiled. When she smiled her whole face organized itself into something pleasant and reasonable, like a real estate listing. "Was that so hard?"
The kitchen was a disaster. Somebody had made nachos and somebody had abandoned the nachos, and the cheese had become a kind of geological layer on the sheet pan. There were seven glasses on the island, three with lipstick on them. A bag of tortilla chips had been dumped out on the floor by the slider door and then stepped on. Junie got the broom and started there.
Upstairs, Kenzie's music cut off and her voice floated down the stairs. "Mom! Mom, come look, I put it on with the shoes!"
Dana's slippers went up. Then a pause. Then Dana's voice, warm, so warm it was almost a different person: "Oh, baby. Oh, McKenzie. Look at you."
Junie scraped nacho cheese into the trash with a spatula and did not go look.